Every day when I pick up the newspapers, I feel like I am stepping through a looking glass into an alternate reality.

Everyone agrees that improving education is one of our nation’s top priorities, that our future depends on it. But I never read anything about curriculum, classroom instruction or class sizes, nothing about figuring out what resources and supports will help educators or how to address the needs of struggling students or school communities.

Instead, I read about people and organizations scapegoating and demonizing educators. They prefer to talk about things such as how principals must be able to lay off whatever teachers they want, tenure ought to be abolished, teacher evaluations made more punitive, collective-bargaining rights eliminated and benefits for educators slashed.

In short, a wholesale attack on the teaching profession.

And I wonder how in the world are we going to improve education if these critics won’t engage in the issues that really matter?

Take the issue of layoffs. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is determined to lay off teachers. The city has a $3-billion surplus, the Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said layoffs are not necessary, and sensible revenue-generating plans are on the table in Albany. And keep in mind we have lost 5,000 teachers through attrition just in the last two years.

But the mayor wants to do layoffs anyway, just so he can force the issue of changing seniority rules. How does this help education?

This isn’t just happening in New York. The fight that we see our colleagues engaging in around the country is in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Tennessee and elsewhere is a brazen attack on teachers.

None of the proposals being debated in any of these states will do anything to help education and, in fact, will harm it.

And in Denver last week, a conference convened by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan that was supposed to be about developing collaborative ways to improve education centered instead on developing punitive measures against educators.

Where is the discussion in any of these places about helping teachers be more effective, about reducing class sizes, about what schools and communities and government can do to help children overcome challenges they face?

We don’t hear discussion about any of these issues, except by educators themselves.

Across the country, educators are under attack by people who eagerly demonize those who teach. If these critics really want to help improve education, they need to stop hand-wringing and engage in the issues that really matter.